


The One That Ends It All

by eighth_chiharu



Series: The One Where Dave's a Vampire [11]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Incest, M/M, Stridercest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eighth_chiharu/pseuds/eighth_chiharu
Summary: Four years later, Dirk is a senior at Santa Monica High School. He's got friends and a lover and a cherished family, and is pretty sure Bro is dead. The only things left to worry about are college applications, and what Dave's going to do once Dirk graduates. That is, until a face from the past shows up, bringing trouble...





	1. friends and lovers

I don’t know what time it is when the sound rouses me. The cotton sheets rustle off to my left. The mattress dips along my side, and suddenly Dave’s mouth is against mine in the darkness, coaxing and cool. Enticed, I lift my drowsy arms to embrace him, drag my heavy legs open for him. Wrap everything around his body, take in his coldness, give back warmth. His lips move to my jaw, my throat, suckling, nipping. I moan softly, brokenly, my voice thick. He works his way down to my chest, stopping an inch or two below my collarbone. His hand slides over my hip. His thumb pulls at my shorts, caressing the dip that my pelvic bone creates. He bites down –   _That old familiar sting_ , I think –  and I gasp as the euphoria rolls over me, crushes everything else and leaves nothing behind but want. There’s only the dark, and Dave, his mouth, and his hand.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I wake when the alarm goes off. The bedside clock glows red in the windowless room, barely providing enough light for me to see by. I don't focus on the numbers. I sit up in the wide bed, glancing at the empty space off to my right. I'm up against Dave, and he's up against the edge of the mattress. There's room for two or three people in all that extra emptiness.

I yawn and squint at Dave in the gloom, the walls red with darkroom-soft crimson. 

He's dead.

His head is on the pillow, the blanket up over his shoulders. Anyone who didn’t know better would think he was asleep. 

I know better.  
  
I lean over to kiss his cheek. His skin is warm despite his deceased state, which means feeding on me was the last thing he did before he let the sun pull him under. A fuzzy, happy heat unfurls in my chest, right beneath the tiny scabbed wound.  
  
“I love you,” I murmur. He can’t hear me. I don’t care.  
  
I tuck the blankets unnecessarily closer around him before I slip out from under the navy-and-white comforter he picked out just for me. The laminate floor is cold beneath my bare feet. I wince. One day I'll convince Dave that a throw rug won't ruin his modern aesthetic. Maybe I could just drag a towel in here and pretend I forgot it in a heap beside the bed. I check the clock for real, actually reading it.

7:00am, it says. Time to get ready for school. 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It takes me the usual hour to get spruced up. Twenty minute scalding shower, ten minutes getting dressed, twenty minutes doing my hair. Don't laugh, a beautiful mane like this deserves all the attention I can give it, and no expense is spared. I have the perfect gel, the perfect hairspray, the perfect technique for making it lively but not demented. Another ten minutes to shave -- I could skip it, it's only once a week, but I can't stand looking scruffy, I really can't -- and then it's shoes on and out the door. I'm seventeen already, you'd think I could handle getting myself prepped for school, but I'm used to Rose and her benevolent dictatorship. Without her around, it's harder to remember important things like breakfast -- though a lot easier to leave Dave's room without a thousand shades of guilt and one very calculating stare.

Outside, the morning is freezing, a different sort of cold than Dave. It’s the cold of cyclical Life, not the cold of Death. The breeze off the ocean is biting, pulling at my hair and cutting through my sweatshirt as I walk to the bus stop. I should’ve worn the heavier coat, but I wasn’t in the mood to carry all that weight. I didn’t even bring my backpack. Whenever Dave takes blood from me, I get a little sluggish after. I don’t tell him that, of course, because he’d have some sort of guilty breakdown and stop doing it, but it makes some mornings harder to bear than others.

“D-Stri!”

Roxy leans out of the window as the bus rumbles past me in a cloud of street dust and diesel exhaust. She waves a shiny foil packet like incentive, the carrot for the reluctant donkey. I break into a trot, though I know the bus won’t leave without me. The driver has enough problems without being accused of leaving one of the Delian kids behind. At least, I'm hoping that's the case.

“Sit down,” I say as I jog by, slapping the side of the bus.

Her hair is a windblown mess of curls, but her lipsticked grin is 110% genuine. I gotta admit, I never realized how amazing having a best friend was until I got one. I guess that’s how most stuff is. Don't know how cool it is 'til you have it, and then you hope it's just as cool as you imagined. Then again, I've got a pretty good idea of how awesome it’d be to have a car, even if I don't have one yet.

“Make me,” she laughs.  
  
“You’re gonna get yelled at,” I snort. I come to a stop by the door, waiting as it opens with a creak and a hiss. Sure enough, the second it's wide enough for me to slip through, the driver turns around to snap at Roxy.

“Close that window, Lalonde, or you’re gonna have detention!”

Roxy's voice is way too perky for this time of morning. “I am, I am! Cut me some slack, Dirk needed encouragement!”

I climb the three steep black steps into the bus. The bus driver eyes me, but doesn’t say anything, just closes the door behind me and throws the bus into gear. I stumble with the lurch, grabbing onto the back of a seat. Roxy shuts the window and plops down. Despite my public clumsiness, I smirk at her from the aisle. “Told you so.”

“Shush,” she says, moving the pink canvas satchel she insists on dragging around so I can sit. She embroidered -- actually hand-embroidered -- several cats on it, then covered the whole thing in promotional pins from all sorts of weird places. She says she gets them from penpals. I don't know if I believe her. She probably writes to the places directly just to satisfy her indie aesthetic.

She throws the silver packet at me as I drop into the empty seat. Not my best catch, but at least I don’t drop it. She notices my slacking anyway. “You still asleep? You forgot your backpack.” She notices a lot.

“Didn’t wanna carry it.” I open the package. “Fuck yes, Orange Crush Pop Tarts. That’s my girl.” This explains her ridiculous cheerfulness.

“Goddamn right. You know I got you." The words look like _u knw i got u_ in my head. "What’re you gonna do about your homework?”

“I turned it in last night online.” I pull a Pop Tart out, break off a piece, and shove it in my mouth. Processed sugar, where have you been all my life? “Told you, didn’t want to carry the bag.”

Roxy hums, reaches into her pocket and pulls out the rest of her own cherry Pop Tart. Her shoulder rubs against mine, her hip touching for a second until she settles. “This a lazy thing, or an anemia thing?”

Anemia is the stupidest, most trite explanation the world ever came up with vampires – so it works great. Everyone buys it. Teachers, students, friends, enemies -- I get pity points like you wouldn't believe, and I spend them with no qualms whatsoever. I have more days off than I know what to do with. Who needs perfect attendance when you have the highest GPA in school?

“Who knows. Who cares?" I eat more of the Pop Tart. I probably should’ve had breakfast, but Rose wasn't there to nag me. "I don’t have the thing, I don’t want it, and I don’t need it. We got books at school. You done, Mom?”

It’s her turn to snort, and also to punch me on the arm. I grin. She blows a raspberry at me, and I smell cherry pastry. Which reminds me that we’re missing a couple members of our trio.

“Where’s Jane? Wasn't she gonna bring Mary Berry's famous cherry cake?”

“At school already,” Roxy says through even more Pop Tart. The girl has an amazing mouth capacity, I swear to God. “She had to finish stuff for the Senior Trip bake sale, set it up, hang the signs, get the cash box. Made Jake help her.”

“That explains the quiet.”

“Savor it.” It’s good-natured. She likes Jake, even if he’s a little… wordy. I like him, too. We all do. She licks a finger, pretending to be casual. “Sooooo, did you answer his text?”

Okay, maybe ‘like’ is the wrong word to use. I groan, my head going back against the seat. To be honest, I'd forgotten all about it. Dave's mouth tends to wipe out more memories than a system crash on Snapchat. “No, I didn’t. I didn't."

"Why not?!"

"I don’t know what to say, okay? How do you even write an answer to something like that? Jake thinks we live in an anime!”

That earns me another smack. “Says the guy in the dumbass triangle sunglasses. I told you, Kamina, just tell him no! But do it soon, and do it nice, he’s sensitive.”

I ignore the dull-witted, overused Gurren Lagann reference. “Sensitive? Rox, c'mon, he’s more oblivious than a desk chair. The guy is great, but he couldn’t read the atmosphere with a barometer. If I’m subtle, he’s not gonna get it, and if I’m overt, he’s gonna be offended or hurt. Tell me I'm wrong, I dare you.”

"Uggghhhhhh. Okay, okay. You're not wrong. But..." Roxy sighs, sitting back and sucking contemplatively on the last piece of iced pastry. “I wish there was a better way to say it than just ‘I don’t like you’. But what else would get the message across? You just gotta be, like, super blunt, I guess?”

The bus pulls over to the last stop, and I morosely finish my first Pop Tart. More kids get on as I sit there, silently wracking my brain for another method. There has to be a better way to let Jake down. Something not-embarrassing that doesn’t involve me telling him I have the hots for my adopted older brother. Jake is sweet and mostly reasonable, but he can be incredibly obtuse. If he doesn’t like my answer, he’ll pretend he doesn’t understand it, and then we’ll be locked into weeks of uncomfortable situations until I finally blast him, upsetting not only him, but all four of us. The whole thing is a Grade A mess -- and yet, here I am, still caring about his feelings. Am I a great friend, or what?

“Dirk? Dirk Strider?”

I glance up at the kid who’s stopped beside my seat. It takes a second, but when I get it, my jaw almost drops to the floor. “Holy shit.”

The kid grins “Holy shit is a way t’ put it, yeah! I didn't know you were here!”

Roxy raises both eyebrows. “Don't tell me: it's your ex-boyfriend.”

“I ain't that lucky,” the kid chuckles, holding a hand out. He’s got white fingerless gloves on for some reason, the kind you lift with, the kind I wear, except white and for poseurs, ‘cause white would get dirty way too fast in a gym.

I motion toward Roxy, still surprised as hell. “This is my best friend, Roxy.”

"Pleased as punch t’ meetcha.” The accent is stupidly country, blatant and blurred and just like I remember. He hasn't changed at all.

She takes his hand gingerly, unsure. “Sure. Me too. Who are you again?”

“Roxy,” I say, smelling sun-baked, dusty Texas roads even as I sit in a bus less than a mile from the California coast, “this is a guy from back home. This is Cal.”


	2. all along

  * Dave isn’t quite as dead as Dirk thinks. If Dirk pondered it more than a little, he’d realize David isn’t dead at all; he’s waiting. He daydreams there, in that magical soft dark place where he can pretend Time doesn’t exist.
  * He contemplates Dirk’s dreams, the ones Dave witnessed in that quiet time before dawn. The ones he could see, because Dirk doesn’t shield when he's asleep. Dirk doesn’t _want_ to shield. Dirk is seventeen, and he wants Dave to hear his needs and emotions with all of his seventeen-year-old soul. Wants Dave to feel Dirk’s desperate passion reverberating silently between them.
  * Dave knows what Dirk thinks about when Dirk gives up his blood for Dave. He knows how it makes Dirk feel. When Dave whispers little endearments, Dirk’s sleeping, slack expression changes ever so slightly. He smiles. He blushes.
  * Dave will regret this soon, if he doesn’t do something. If he doesn’t let Dirk have what he wants.
  * But he’ll regret it if he does, too.




	3. merry meet again

“Oh. Cal. That’s cool.” She shakes and slides her hand out of his, shooting me a look. “You guys friends?”

Cal grins easily. “I like to think so.” He nods at the kid beside him, the one in front of me with the empty place by the window who’s been trying to ignore all of our chatter, and pats the back of the seat. “Hey there, bro. Looks like ya got some room. Mind scootin’ over?”

The kid glances at Cal and does a classic cartoon double-take. He slides to the right with a fast hiss of fabric on vinyl, clutching his backpack in his lap. He presses up against the bus wall, lips drawn back over his teeth like a dog that’s been smacked around.

“Thanks,” Cal says, still smiling. He puts one knee on the seat and keeps one leg in the aisle, so he can lean on the back of the bench. The bus bounces along the road, and Cal bobs up and down with it, like a sailor on a familiar boat. “So how you been, man? It’s been a coon’s age! Didn’t think I’d ever see y’again. How’d ya end up way out here?”

“Oh, you know. The same way you did, probably.” Probably not, but the story of how we got here isn't mine to share. Not to mention, this is one weird coincidence.

Cal, at my school? It’s more likely than you think.

But it’s not something I’m ready to ignore. This seems like one of those coincidences that people in horror stories run into, and then later, when they’re being devoured, wonder how they didn't see the monster in the room. I've had enough monsters for one lifetime. I hope there aren’t any more, but I’m not willing to bet my life on it.

“Your dad?" Cal asks.

“An airplane." Whatever creeps that kid got from Cal, I’m starting to get the same ones. It’s daylight, which means Cal’s no vampire, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t dangerous. Except he's obviously a teenager. “Seriously, man, what the hell are you doing here?”

“What,” Cal grins, “is it freakin’ y’out?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t you get freaked out? It’s been  _three years_.” A cold thought occurs to me, and slithers icily down my spine. “You didn’t follow me, did you?” Because if some guy I met once can follow me anyplace, then  _Bro_  can follow, and I'm about to have more of those monsters I'm not interested in. 

“Follow you?” Roxy echoes, confused. "From Texas?"

“Naw, bro, naw." Cal waves a gloved hand like this is an impossible idea. "I hate t’ tell ya, but it ain’t you I been botherin’ with all this time. I got my own life, y’know? Got other stuff to do besides try to stalk someone I saw once. Twice, if ya count both times that night.”

When he puts it that way, it sounds about as plausible as my own suspicion. Which means one of us is right, but if he's not going to tell me, I'm not going to make a scene about it on a public bus. “Okay, you’re not a stalker, fine. Keep it a secret, whatever.”

Cal’s smile does a quick flip into a sad frown. “This ain’t real neighborly, Dirk. Thought we were road pals.”

“I'm sure you're a great guy, Cal, but I barely know you. Even you have to admit this is pretty out there. This is soap-opera level stuff.”

“C’mon, Dirk! Where’s your sense of adventure? I’m here for the same reason as you!” He pauses, then rolls one shoulder beneath his purple shirt with the yellow logo on it. He glances away again, his mouth twisting. “New place, new chances, right?”

That's... not what I expected to hear. “Yeah. Are you --”

“Are you on the run from the law?” Roxy whispers, tactlessly interested.

“You mean the cops?” Cal asks.

Roxy nods.

Cal shrugs, moves his hands like he’s weighing something in the air.

Roxy gapes. “Really?”

“Naw,” Cal says, grinning suddenly. “Ain’t on the run from no cops. Don’t got nothin’ t’ fear from the LAPD, I am a true-blue law-abidin’ citizen of these blessed United States.” He slaps a hand over his chest and lifts his chin, gazing off into the middle distance. “I pledge allegiance to the flag –”

“Okay, all right,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You’re a red-state patriot, good for you. Stand down. However you got here, if the police aren’t gonna care, then fine, I won’t care.”

“Good t’ hear it.”

“Just – are you a vampire, Cal?”

Roxy smacks me, laughing. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“You never know,” I reply, my false sagacity draping me in imagined filmy samite and authority. “You have to ask these questions, Rox, or you don’t get answers, and then bam, you’re dead. Don’t you read fairy tales?”

“Fine,” she snorts, playing along. “Are you a vampire, Cal?”

Cal shakes his head. “No ma’am.”

“Are you a werewolf?”

He snorts back. “Not if ya paid me.”

“Okay, okay – are you a ghost?”

“A ghost?” I repeat, eyeing her.

“Don’t you watch Supernatural? He could be!”

“He ain’t,” Cal says. He leans on the back of the seat. “Ain’t nothin’. Was made t’ come out here, so I did. Here I am.”

The humor in the air dissipates. Roxy shifts. “Oh. You don’t have to tell us, Cal, it’s okay –”

“Nah, it’s fine. Dirk ain’t gonna believe I ain’t here t’ gobble ‘im up ‘til I spill the beans.”

Roxy elbows me, hard. “Yeah, well, Dirk’s a butt sometimes.”

I wince. “Ow! And I am not –"

“I’m here ‘cause th’ guy who thinks he’s in charge of my life wanted me out here, so here I am.” It’s still pleasant, but in a cold way. “I do what I’m told.”

“Oh,” Roxy says again.

“… your dad,” I say. It’s not much of a question. Hal was out on the road by himself because his dad told him to.

Cal shrugs.

Roxy nods slowly. Then she punches me again. “Ignore him, Cal. We’re sorry. Dirk dosen’t always know the meaning of the word ‘don’t ask about people’s shit’. Ain’t that right, Dirky.”

Cal shrugs it off, smile reappearing. “Sure, I hear ya. Understandable, yknow, the world is a crazy place.”

Relief is evident in Roxy’s voice. “Exactly. You get it. But that sucks about your dad. Makin’ you come out here, I mean. Leave all your friends and stuff.”

“Yeah, well. He’s got a job out here, or will have, or – it don’t matter.” Cal shakes himself, then motions to the Pop-Tart in my hand. “You gonna finish that?”

Opportunity to get back on normal teenage footing spotted. I clutch it and the pastry tighter. “You know, they’ll give you free breakfast at school. You don’t have to steal mine.”

“Ouch, goin’ straight for the heart. Hee hee!” Cal claps a hand over his chest. “This is a tough crowd. Didn’t realize school out here was just like on TV. I shoulda brought my mechanical bull. Give y'all a show, win y'all over.”

Roxy’s eyes light up in a way I know well, and always hope to avoid. “Do you have one? Seriously?”

“You better say no, Cal. She’ll be at your place night and day til she either masters it or takes it apart with a Swiss Army knife.”

“Will not! I mean, not unless he says okay. You should say okay,” she adds.

“Completely fuckin’ with ya,” Cal agrees, his smile as wide as ever. It’s so… so country. So damn good-natured. Like he’d take you fishing, then serve you some of his momma’s sweet potato pie, if he had a momma. It’s so cliché and forgiving.

Sometimes weird shit happens in life, and it’s just that. Weird shit. It isn’t anyone’s fault, or anyone’s plan. Sometimes stuff just… is. Cal doesn’t look like he could hurt anyone except maybe his dad, and I can’t say I’d blame him for that.

The bus swerves, and Cal grabs at the back of the seat, startled. “You kids siddown!” the bus driver shouts over the screech of tires. “Sit your asses in those seats, or I’m not lettin’ any of you off when we get to school!”

“That means we’re almost there,” Roxy interprets. “That was the Maplewood turn. Quick, favorite food, favorite movie, where were you on April 13th?”

Cal laughs. “April 13th of what?”

I nudge her with my shoulder. “She thinks she’s a detective. Don’t admit to anything.”

“Oh, police, huh? Then I wanna report a crime.”

Roxy opens an imaginary notebook. “I’ve got my note-taking pen ready, sir. What was the crime? Did you see the perpetrator? Was it Pop-Tart theft?”

“Assault.”

Her crisp, faux professionalism wilts a little at the edges. She’s thinking the same thing I am, I know it. If Cal’s getting hit –

“Dirk kicked me in the nuts last time he saw me.”

Roxy’s eyes widen. She grins. “Whaaaat?”

“Jesus Christ, Cal," I groan. “That was a total accident. I apologized at least once. Which – you were kinda – on the ground at the time and may not have heard, but it was there. I said it."

“An’ then ya ran off an’ left me dead on th’ ground.”

Roxy is positively glowing with gossipy possibilities. “Oh my God, Dirky, is he serious? Was it a lovers’ spat? Did you dump him? Did he dump  _you?_ ”

“No, come on, I was only thirteen.”

“Middle school romance!” Roxy gasps, scandalized and delighted. She punches me on the shoulder, even harder. I wince. “You dog you!”

“Ow! Fuck, we didn’t romance anything, Rox –”

“Then why’d you kick his nuts? Confess, D-Stri, you and Texas Cal here had a thiiiing~!”

“There was no thing!” I drop what’s left of my Pop-Tart into my lap and smoosh my hands up under my shades, effectively blocking out the haters with my flesh walls. “I swear to whoever curls your hair that if you weren’t my best friend, I would rat you out to the bus driver for detention. Right now.”

“Wait, wait." She pats me, and the echo of the sound probably means she's patting Cal, too. "Wait. You said he gave you a ride, right? Is that a tasteful euphemism? Did you mean –  _you know._  “

I groan louder. “No! Woman, do you live perpetually in the gutter? Did you miss the part where I was thirteen??”

That gives her pause. She purses her lips. “So what, then, it’s like a back-country thing? Lettin’ kids drive when they don’t have a license? Or were you with his mom or something? Was it a supervised  _date_?”

“What?” I drop my hands. “No, he was…”

Something neon red flashes at me in the back of my brain. Something loud, but without words.

“I was drivin’,” Cal agrees cheerfully. “Sure was. Had that big ol’ truck with th’ bench seat and no air conditionin’.”

“Yeah,” I say faintly.

“All by my lonesome, til Dirk showed up.”

“Yeah,” I repeat. My brow furrows. The formless alarm at the back of my mind grows stronger, silently shrieking.

“That’s crazy,” Roxy says, impressed. “They let you do that? Drive out there by yourself? Wherever ‘there’ was? Where were you guys, anyway?”

“A park,” Cal says. “Nowhere big. I thought maybe Dirk was hurt. He was all wet. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he screamed like a girl and kicked me where it counts.”

“Excuse you,” Roxy retorts frostily, “but Dirk screams like a Dirk. He doesn’t sound anything like any girls I know.”

She keeps going, but I don’t hear her.

Cal’s right, he did put his hand on my shoulder back then. I turned and lashed out before I could even think. I’d kicked, and I didn’t hit a knee or a shin. My leg went up, straight up, until it hit its goal, because the person I kicked was taller than me.

The mental alarm cuts off, and the obvious falls into place as lightly as a leaf falls from a tree, settling decidedly on the sidewalk of my mind.

Cal was taller than me then. Looking up at him from my seat, he seems exactly the same, purple shirt notwithstanding. Exactly the same. As though he hasn't changed in the past almost-four years.

He looks the  _same_.

“How old are you?” I ask suddenly. “Are you in our year?”

“Uh oh,” Roxy smirks, “romance rekindled. Jake better watch out!”

Cal glances at her, expression changing in a way I can't name. “Jake? Who’s that?”

“Our friend. He’s got a thing for Dirk. But don’t tell him I told you that. He’s sweet, I swear, but he’s really – ya gotta be careful with ‘im, okay? He’s super nice. Just a little… y’know.”

“Gotcha.” Cal nods, his gaze sliding back to me. “Gonna get yourself a man, huh, Dirk? That’s great. Y’all deserve that.”

“I’m not. I mean -- I don't. Answer me. How  _old_  are you?”

Roxy nudges me hard. “Dirk, stop being rude. He came here from Texas for a guy who nailed him in the balls, and all you can do is drill him about his age? Who cares?”

“I care.”

She makes a face. “He’s the same age as us, dunderfuck, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. He’s, what, sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Rox, I’m serious. Just let me ask this, okay?” I sit up a little, anxious all over again. “Tell me how old you are.”

Cal rolls his eyes, chuckling. “All right, calm down, bro, hee hee! I’m –"

The bus jolts to a stop, the whole vehicle rocking forward with a neck-snapping jerk.

“Everybody off!” the driver shouts. “Get off, you little shits, hurry up, out out out!”

The door opens. Kids get to their feet en masse, grumbling, laughing, roughhousing. The driver yells at them to knock it off, but no-one listens.

“Cal?” I pick up my bag from the floor and hold it in my lap, my fingers curled around it tight. Why am I nervous? He’s just a kid, what the fuck is there to be nervous about? “Cal –"

“Oh shit,” Roxy breathes, and almost presses her nose to the window. “It’s Jake.”

“What.” I lean forward but not past her, just far enough to peek out the window. “Where?"

"Right there." She points, tapping the glass. "The front steps. Oh, God, they're coming."

I don't need this right now. I don't  _need_  this. "You said they were setting up.”

“They were! They must be done,” she adds apologetically. “Duck down, maybe they won’t – nope, he saw you.”

Of course he did. Of fucking course he did.

I stand, knocking some kid back, and only muster up a half-hearted, wholly distracted apology. “Sorry. Look, Cal –”

Cal grins. “Hee hee, say no more, pal, I got this!”

“What? Got what – Cal, stop –!”

He grabs my wrist and yanks me out of my seat, stupidly strong. I can’t believe that noodle body has this much pull, but I don’t get time to marvel at it. I’m off-balance, stumbling along behind him as he shoves his way through the kids in the aisles. They all fall into the seats, squawking indignantly, and Cal drags me past them, right off the bus. I almost fall down the stairs, stopped only by the faceplant into his backpack. I get a real up-close look at the sewn-on patch there, some brightly colored mascot from some popular kids’ puppet show, and then his arm is around my shoulders, hauling me to his side, wrapping me in heat and Axe.

“Cal, stop it --"

“Dirk!” Roxy is stuck inside the bus, hand out the window, banging on the bus' metal siding. “You asshole, don’t ditch me!”

“It’s not me –!” I try, but it’s hard to look back when Cal’s arm is covering up all of my peripheral vision.

“Hey, man. What’s up?”

I jerk my gaze back to the front, nearly biting right through my tongue. It’s Jake. Jake of the dark hair and muscles, of the stupidly hairy legs and perpetually spotty glasses. Jake, who was voted Most Good-Looking last year, despite said glasses. Jake, who has a Lissen Grove accent and who thinks he ought to be my boyfriend, and probably would be, except for the whole secret Dave thing. Jake is here, with Jane beside him. They’re wearing matching school sweatshirts, and buttons pinned on that say  _Ask me about my pie!_ with green fluorescent dollar signs replacing the letter S. 

They’re gonna get detention for those.

“Jake,” I say, stomach sinking. I never answered his text. I didn’t tell him no, and I can’t do it now. I can’t do that to him here, with everyone watching. “You guys all set up?”

He nods. Jane doesn’t say anything. That means she knows. Aw,  _fuck_.

Jake nods towards Cal and sticks his hand out, giving one of his winning smiles. “Hullo. I’m Jake, this is Jane. We’re Dirk’s.”

Not ‘Dirk’s friends’, just ‘Dirk’s.’ I want to sink into the ground. This is so not the place, so not the time.

“Yeah?” Cal drawls, ignoring Jake’s hand. He pulls me closer. I try to pull away, but I can't move his arm.

“Yeah.” Jake’s smile is slipping. “Who are you, if I might ask, new kid?”

Jake. Handsome, sweet, possessive Jake, who can’t take a hint.

I open my mouth to start belated introductions. “Jake, this is –”

“Calvin,” Cal interrupts, finally grabbing Jake’s hand. He doesn't let go of me. He shakes Jake's hand, the tendons in his fingers contracting, and the skin around Jake’s eyes tightens. “But y'all can call me Cal. I’m Dirk’s, too.”

“ _You’re_  Dirk’s?” Jane repeats. “What’s that mean?”

Cal’s grin widens, but it’s much less friendly than it was on the bus. “Exactly what Mr Jake here wishes it meant. I’m Dirk’s. Dirk’s  _boyfriend_. Nice ta meetcha’ll, hee hee!”

 


End file.
